Cooking appliances provide consumers with tremendous benefits, including safer cooking procedures, increased convenience, and higher quality food. Many types of cooking appliances exist, including rotisseries, toaster ovens, ice cream makers, cookers, deep fryers, griddles, food processors, blenders, steamers, coffee makers, juice makers, grinders, among others.
Rotisserie cooking, in particular, is considered to be among the healthiest ways of preparing foods. Unlike other cooking methods, unhealthy grease and oil are allowed to drip off all sides of the food while it is being cooked. Other cooking methods allow grease and oil to settle into the top of the foods. Rotisserie cooking is also among one of the tastiest methods of cooking. Contrasted with other cooking methods, moisture while cooking doesn't settle to the bottom of the food, allowing the top to dry out. Taste is enhanced too because foods, and particularly meats, self-baste during the rotisserie cooking process. This self basting both seals in flavor and moisture, and simultaneously adds flavor to the outside of the food being cooked. Rotisserie foods require little or no seasonings to add flavor for reasons just mentioned. Finally, unlike many other methods of cooking, rotisserie cooking requires no, or virtually no, attention during the actual cooking process.
Among the most popular rotisseries in today's U.S. marketplace are those fitted to outdoor grills. Generally these have a gear reduced electric motor powering a single rod horizontal spit over a charcoal or gas fired heat source, with either an open-air or enclosed oven design. These units have their shortcomings, particularly during inclement weather, or when it is very hot or very cold, or when flies, ants or yellow jackets are around, or when it's windy, etc.
Prior art rotisserie designs are often inherently expensive to manufacture, unnecessarily complicated, difficult to use, fail to optimize space use, and/or difficult to clean. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,754,401, 2,831,954, 5,801,362 and 6,363,841 each use an essentially rectangular oven housing to enclose a rotisserie spit. Whereas these devices are somewhat space efficient, each widens the entire housing in order to accommodate the operating controls, and each shows at least two containment walls between their oven interiors and their outside faces on at least a portion of their cabinetry. Several other designs in US patent prior art attempt to achieve aesthetic pleasantness at the expense of space efficiency. As examples, U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,076,453 and 6,186,054 both show devices with a more curved plan view which fails to maximize countertop space use.
Prior art rotisseries usually have no internal light and no window or only a small window to view the food while it's being cooked. Such construction makes it difficult to check cooking progress. Moreover, opening the doors on these enclosed oven units generally lets out the hot cooking air, which, in turn, slows cooking and makes gauging cooking times even more difficult. Cooking results can therefore be unpredictable on these units, particularly on charcoal fired models due to variances in the heat source and outside air. Furthermore, the exteriors of these units generally get very hot and thus present safety considerations, which may require warning labels and extra caution on the part of the users.
Charcoal grills have additional inconveniences of having to start and maintain their hot coals. Starting charcoal fires or using bottled or other forms of gas may also present safety hazards, and hot grease dripping onto glowing charcoal, gas flames or onto hot electric coils may flare up. In addition, the single rod spits used on most of these rotisseries may be difficult to use and may not do an adequate job of supporting the food being cooked.
Another popular rotisserie type in the U.S. market is the enclosed countertop rotisserie having a vertically rotating spit. These typically have limited capacity, such as being able to cook only a chicken weighing five pounds or less. Such capacity may be unsuitable for families or for use at parties. Also, many of these units have small door openings and hot oven walls which make it difficult to insert and remove food, and usually when the door is opened it swings to one side where it is still in the way of loading or unloading foods, especially when the door is hot. Because these units rotate foods about a vertical axis, the top half of the food usually becomes dry even when the chef takes the inconvenient trouble to regularly baste. Furthermore, there are usually no provisions for putting smaller foods closer to the heat source where they might cook faster. Finally, these units have very hot exteriors, which may present safety hazards requiring warning labels and extra user care.
Another rotisserie type becoming popular in the U.S. is the countertop toaster oven with horizontal rotisserie spit. These typically have capacity limitations similar to those found on countertop rotisseries with vertical spits. They combine these limitations with the difficulty of use of outdoor rotisseries with their inadequate, awkward and limited use single rod spits.
Many of these countertop toaster ovens also present fire safety and smoke hazards from heat rods, which are directly next to grease drip pans. They also have tight door openings and small oven cavities which make it difficult to insert and remove foods, particularly when the units are hot. Furthermore, many of these units have thermostatically controlled heating elements, which cycle on and off and thus lengthen rotisserie cooking time. Rotisseries are most efficient when they have a constant radiant heat source. A constant source of heat, however, requires a method of efficiently removing heat from the cooking cavity which these units typically don't posses. Without efficiently removing heat, rotisserie oven interiors may overheat.
These units also typically have small door windows and little or no interior lighting, which makes it difficult to view cooking progress. Their spits are also very difficult to maneuver into place and pull out of the oven, both due to the small oven cavities and because of poor mounting design. This is particularly true when the oven is hot. In addition, when the doors open on these units, they generally swing down or swing to one side where they are in the way of loading and unloading food, particularly when the doors are hot. The conventional rotisserie also has doors that are generally complicated in construction, typically having a small piece of glass framed with several pieces of metal, creating an assembly, which is then permanently hinged to the cooking cavity. The units also have no means to bring smaller foods closer to the heat source where they might cook faster.
Substantially all of the rotisseries on the market today have several shortcomings in common. They are usually limited as to what they can cook. Small foods or foods that can't be skewered may not be mountable for cooking. Even where baskets that fit on the spits are available, they are difficult to use and generally do a poor job of holding some types of food. They occupy a large amount of space. This is particularly detrimental for indoor units where kitchen space may be at a premium. Few current rotisseries adequately display the food being cooked, which, with rotisserie cooking, can be a taste tempting show in itself.
Cleanup is also very difficult on most units. This is because few components can be removed for cleaning, and areas, which require a lot of cleaning, may be difficult to access, as an example, behind the heating elements. Other cooking appliances have similar disadvantages. Their electronic components and/or heating elements can not be readily detached from the structures which are in contact with food, thereby making them difficult to clean safely and not capable of being subjected to dishwashers. In addition to rotisseries, toaster ovens, for example, have their heating elements and electronics integrally formed with the structure encapsulating the heating area.
It would be preferred to have a tasty, healthy food preparation method also be easy to use and clean. While some of the aforementioned cooking appliances have food compartments in the form of cups or containers that are easily removed from the rest of the device and easy to clean, certain devices, particularly rotisseries and toaster ovens, have heating elements and other electronic components that are integrally formed with the enclosure exposed to food, thereby making the devices difficult to clean and use.